The Work Plan

Monday, February 28, 2011

Last week was a very light week. Children were in and out due to illnesses. By Wednesday morning I was a nurse and sending kids home quickly. The verdict flu and strep throat. So I have been continuously cleaning our materials to keep this illness from spreading. Now it is Monday and I am praying for another light day because now I feel ill. This season has been quite different I have never had this high of a illness rate when all of the children succumb to sickness at once. I have been carrying around disinfectant like it is a weapon of mass destruction around here. LOL. Well here are some pictures to give you a glimpse of how our week looked like last week.

Practical Life

Wet pouring.

Transferring beads using pincer grasp.

Sponging.

Spooning rice.

Language

Matching object to object.

F is for fish. Jay decided to do the matching object to object with the sandpaper letters.

Pinpunching Asia.

Working with phonogram ee.

Writing the letter f.

Sensorial/ Mathematics
First up, do you remember when I said that the children were mostly just interested in practical life, animals, and the language lessons? Well I was wrong! Two weekends ago I rearranged our enviroment again. This time it was a success. The children ran to the math materials immediately. I have to say the prepared enviroment is the key. I moved the math area to the other wall in our practical life area. We are loving this new set up.

Pink tower extension.

Making patterns.

Working with sandpaper numbers.

Doing an addition booklet with the small number rods.

Golden bead place value work.

Number rods.

Bead stair.

To see other children doing activities inspired by the montessori method please visit One Hook Wonder for Montessori Monday.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

We have been learning about fish. This unit may go little longer than planned. The kids are enjoying the works. Yeah! Here are a few things that are out this week that they have spent quite a bit of time with.

Parts of the fish puzzle.

Parts of the fish nomenclature cards.

Sensory bin that the children are just loving. Thank you so much Nicole for sharing this idea. You can find a lot of creative inspirational ideas at Nicoles' blog One Hook Wonder.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

When I reflect back on some of my favorite memories of school in my elementary years I can't help but to think about stringing Fruit Loops. It was so much fun to share this with two of my students who were the only ones present for the day.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

If you have a child or a group of children that are ready to read but are at a stage where blending the word together is at a halt this activity may be for you. I do guided reading with a small group of children. I have worked with these children for sometime now and so I knew they were ready to learn some sight words while learning how to read. I found a successful set of readers that I have been searching for. They are published by Creative Teaching Press and come with wonderful worksheets. Yes you heard me say worksheets and the children love them. We do our guided readings on Mondays,Wednesdays and Fridays. The books are avaliable for the children to use whenever they choose to independently practice. We also complete the worksheet activity after each lesson. I do believe that if I was individually teaching this to my child at home that they would probably gain mastery of the words within two weeks, this is if the child is ready and willing to participate in reading and doing the various activities. We have now completed two guided reading sessions and the children are wanting more. Here is how it looks so far.

Before I do the first reading we take a picture walk through the story.

Next the children spin the wheel and ask questions about the story. For example What do you think this story will be about by looking at the cover, Is it fiction or non-fiction?

Then I do the first reading while the children turn the pages and follow along. While I am doing this I am observing who is tracking correctly and are we all on the same page. Now it is the childrens' turn I still lead by saying "ready, point, read" when we begin a new page. The first reading we read half the book, the second reading we read the whole book and now I have the children tracking and reading on the same page. Something fantastic happened when we last read all of them asked if they could read a page, so we took turns reading a page aloud.

Here are the two worksheets we have done so far.

With the worksheets being used it is a nice way to end a reading session. I do have some hands on activities planned to make this book memorable for the children. The sight words that the children are learning is around, all, I, see, yes, no, and color words. There is also phonics incorporated in this book with teaching the sound of ee as in bee.

Here is N reading independently asking me if I would like her to read to me. N was so tickled that she was able to read the words that she almost couldn't follow through.

I put these three part cards on the language shelf for children to work with as well.

&nbspRight now I have eight colors for the children to work with in the pouch.

If you have any reading lessons or language activities you have done with your children or classroom please link up and share. Please be sure in your post that you put a link back to this in your blog post. Thank you for reading and participating.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Today is a snow day here. I am officially open but only two childrens' parents could make the drive today. Schools were scheduled to be closed in honor of Presidents' Day and I was looking forward to spending time with the school agers. My kids were rather disappointed as well because they don't get to see them as much since they have transferred to a new school. The pressure was on to get there hands busy so I prepared a story bag for them.

The Story Bag
I found the story prompts from the free download section from Montessori for Everyone. I showed my children some blanks books I was saving for another project and they have been writing for the past few hours now.

Decorating the cover of their new books.

The writing begins.

Some of the things I liked about this activity is it was free, easy to put together, and my children are busy using their creative minds. Also they asked me for some help with grammar.

Tomorrow I will be starting a linky called Lets' Read. On Tuesdays my postings will be about anything that has to do with reading, geared toward the age groups from 0 to highschool. I hope that you will be able to share past postings or some that are waiting to be published. I love learning new creative ways to get kids interested in reading and can't wait to read how you get your children or the children you teach to keep those books open.

To find other ideas to get children writing pop over to Writer's Workshop hosted by Giggles and Crayons.

We had a very good work week last week. We got a rhythm that is going really well. I am praying that it stays this way. Here are the pictures of the children while they are working.

Using pincer grasp transfering the beads to the suction cups.

Practicing coloring in the lines.

Lacing.

Polishing silver.

Sandpaper letters.

Golden bead work.

Using a "iron" to practice the motions.

Folding napkins.

Moveable alphabet with pink series work.

Learning to care for plants.

Number Rods..

Presidential Work
This basket contains information cards about our Presidents, the First Lady, branches of government, money and the White House. Older children will find this fact information interesting and may lead to later research work. Also there is a picture to picture matching work.

There are four groups, three sets have 11 matching pictures and one set has 10. At the beginning level the child will work with only one set at a time.

This is an example of how the work will look matched correctly. There is also information on the back of each card about the President. The picture matching I have introduced to both the preschoolers and the toddlers and they did a fantastic job matching. Some even asked me to read some of the information on the back.

The information cards.

To see other children doing activities inspired by the montessori method please visit Montessori Monday hosted by One Hook Wonder.